Their answer to the power shortage of 1947 was
the prompt installation at Enfield of diesel engines to safeguard
production. Contracts for power station requirements were accorded
the utmost priority and concrete roof-lights, stairs and steel doors
were supplied to many stations so that the needs of others could be
met as soon as possible. The steel shortage called for much ingenuity
both in the drawing office and in the works, the devising of practical
alternatives for materials and parts no longer obtainable. The use of
aluminium was in part the company's solution to this problem and an
established market in aluminium glazing bars (considered more suitable
for certain purposes than the heavier, scarcer steel) owned its growth
largely to the shortage of steel. As with power stations, so orders
received from steel-producing works were given priority over other less
urgent work.
Haywards' production and public policy therefore
ran parallel. The schools' construction programme brought contracts
for roof-glazing, lantern lights and windows. Obviously, the sooner
these demands could be satisfied, the sooner the schools could function.
Work for various universities was also a feature of the company's
endeavours in this direction.
It would be difficult to examine any aspect
of the national rehabilitation without discovering some part Haywards
had played. In atomic research, their work was visible at Harwell and
Glasgow University and in oil refineries, at Ellesmere, Fawley and the
Isle of Grain. The defence programme brought orders from aircraft
factories, army centres and naval establishments. In mining districts,
pit-head baths were furnished with lanterns and concrete roof-lights
from the Enfield works. In factories, schools and other places, cooker
hoods for kitchens and canteens came from the Union Street works, where
a department specialises in this type of manufacture.
The supply of lantern lights to Buckingham
Palace at this time was an echo of the provision seventy years earlier
of iron stalls and other stable fittings for the horses of another queen.
And if the spirit of Guy Fawkes still lurks in the precincts of the